The Constitution Quotes

The Court has long held that the Constitution protects certain fundamental rights that are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution's text, while at the same time emphasizing that courts must proceed with great caution in recognizing such rights.

The American people deserve a blueprint for policymaking that is built upon the Constitution of the United States and the principles of fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense.

I hope the great Business of Elections will never be left by the Many, to be done by the Few; for before we are aware of it, that few may become the Engine of Corruption ... Heaven forbid! that our Countrymen should ever be byass’d in their Choice, by unreasonable Predilections for any man, or that an Attachment to the Constitution, as has been the Case in other Countries, should be lost in Devotion to Persons. The Effect of this would soon be, to change the Love of Liberty into the Spirit of Faction. Let each Citizen remember, at the Moment he is offering his Vote, that he is not making a Present or a Compliment to please an Individual, or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn Trusts in human Society, for which he is accountable to God and his Country.

The Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.

Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.

The rights given in the Constitution are given to all people—the most popular and the least popular.

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.

The American dream comes from opportunity. The opportunity comes from our founding principles, our core values that's held together and protected by the Constitution. Those ideas are neither Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, white, or black. Those are American ideologies.

The law of unintended consequences, far more than the Constitution, is what governs the modern presidency.

The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental rights of private property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.

An act of the Congress of the United States... which assumes powers... not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void and of no force

There is no fear exception to the 4th Amendment of the Constitution.

To hell with the Constitution! We aren't going by the Constitution. We are following the orders of Governor Peabody.

In the Constitution of the United States, Negroes are referred to as fellows although the word 'slave' is carefully avoided before the thirteenth amendment.

If you take a position under the Constitution that is against the majority view, you have to explain it well enough that maybe you can persuade some of that majority to agree with you.

The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.

A woman running for President. There is not a thing in the Constitution to prohibit it. I cannot vote but I can be voted for.

It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door … and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.

it is obvious that there is only wanting to the fiscal prosperity of the Government the restoration of an uniform medium of exchange … it is essential that the nation should possess a currency of equal value, credit, and use wherever it may circulate. The Constitution has entrusted Congress exclusively with the power of creating and regulating a currency

Over the course of 19 years on the Supreme Court, I learned some lessons about the Constitution of the United States.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

Are these men, women, and children slaves? Are they free? Is their condition that of men, women, and children, or of property, or is it a mixed relation? What their status was under the constitution and laws, we all know. What has been the effect of a rebellion and a state of war upon that status? When I adopted the theory of treating the able-bodied negro fit to work in the trenches as property liable to be used in aid of rebellion, and so contraband of war, that condition of things was in-so-far met, as I then and still believe, on a legal and constitutional basis. But now a new series of questions arise. Passing by women, the children, certainly, cannot be treated on that basis; if property, they must be considered the incumbrance rather than the auxiliary of an army, and, of course, in no possible legal relation could be treated as contraband. Are they property? If they were so, they have been left by their masters and owners, deserted, thrown away, abandoned, like the wrecked vessel upon the ocean. Their former possessors and owners have causelessly, traitorously, rebelliously, and, to carry out the figure, practically abandoned them to be swallowed up by the winter storm of starvation. If property, do they not become the property of salvors? But we, their salvors, do not need and will not hold such property, and will assume no such ownership: has not, therefore, all proprietary relation ceased? Have they not become, thereupon, men, women, and children?

The Constitution does not expressly provide for a right of association. Gradually, however, the 1st Amendment and the ‘liberty’ interest secured by the Fourteenth Amendment have been interpreted to protect a person's right to associate with others who share similar ideas, interests, and goals. Self-government is more than Self. In many ways, America is a nation of joiners. Americans band together to seek friendship, cooperation, and concerted action.

All I'm going to say is I put my hand on a Bible, and I raised my right hand and swore to uphold the Constitution of the state of Florida.